It’s very rare however that I’ll finish a book nowadays with bad grammar. Life is too short to put up with books like that.

Anastacia Zittel – 23 December 2015

About Reviewing

How did you get started?

I’ve been reading books avidly since I was a kid. Entertainment for me growing up was going to the library or the bookstore and coming home with a new stack of friends to read. I had an online friend who reviewed books, and she got me started. Most of my early reviews are just a line or two – who knew reviewing books was actually hard work?

How do you review a book? Is it a read first, and then make notes, or do you make notes as you go along?

I don’t generally take notes per se, but I mentally write my review as I go. I’ll refer back to the book as I write the review, however, and I’ll sometimes highlight a passage to refer back to, but I mostly rely upon my memory – not necessarily the best way to go about it, but it works for me!

What are you looking for?

Fantastic characters that you fall in love with. Genre is less important to me, plot is less important to me, I want a character that I love.

If a book has a great plot, great characters, but the grammar is less than perfect, how do you deal with that?

I’m fussier now then I was even five years ago. It didn’t used to bother me, but now it does.

If it’s an occasional mistake, it’s not a big deal, but more and more, if the book needs more editing, I don’t finish the book and I move on, unless I really love the main characters. It’s very rare however that I’ll finish a book nowadays with bad grammar. Life is too short to put up with books like that.

How long does it take you to get through, say, an eighty thousand-word book?

How many pages is that ? Lol. Really, it varies upon so many factors – how much I am currently enjoying the book, how busy I am with real life stuff, how many other books I’m reading at the same time. I finished my most recent Diana Gabaldon book over the course of eight or nine months, but read the previous one in the series in a couple of weeks.

How did you come up with your rating system, and could you explain more about the rating system?

I use the same standard five star rating system that Goodreads uses.

One star usually means I didn’t finish the book, that I really hated it (in which case I usually don’t finish the book, see above with life is too short….)

Two means I liked the book enough to finish it, but the book had serious issues with it (in my opinion), often, but not necessarily, because of grammar / poor editing / too simple of a plot.

Three stars means I liked it. Most of my reviews are three stars – I’m a bit of a hard ass! Three stars means I liked the book, I liked the characters, I really liked at least one character or one plot twist or one conversation…

Four stars means I liked the book enough I’d recommend it to a friend, read more books by that author, really enjoyed the plot or the characters, and most likely read the book in just a few days because I couldn’t put it down.

Five stars which I rarely give. I’m not one to give five stars on everything I read, like I said I’m a bit of a hard ass. I have to really fall in love with the characters and not have any issues whatsoever with pacing, or the plot, or the conversations, or anything really. I usually only give five stars to a book by an author that I’ve read before and really love, but not always.

What advice could you give to authors looking to get their books reviewed?

Do the research and don’t waste your time and the book bloggers time asking for a review from a blogger who isn’t into your book genre. Use the book blogger’s name. Include all of the info, including the actual book, in the first email. Often times by the time I get to a book review request, the email has gotten lost in the shuffle and now I can’t contact the author in order to actually request the book. If I get the book in the initial email, I always immediately save it to my e-reader and now it’s good to go when I’m ready to start a new book and at that point, it’s easy enough to hunt down an author if I’m interested in getting in touch.

Do you get readers emailing you and thanking you for a review?

Not through my blog but I do get comments from people on Amazon.

My advice to authors on getting a ‘bad’ review (hasten to add that might mean a perfectly honest, well written, fair review – just bad from the author’s point of view) is to take what you can from it and move on. Under no circumstances to ‘argue’ with the reviewer – would you agree with that?

Yup, pretty much. I try really hard to write a balanced review, and if I can’t do that I often decline the review altogether. I do prefer to write negative reviews as compared to no review as much as I can – I like the record it leaves for me, I think it’s fair to other readers, and hopefully the author can learn something from my comments even if he/she disagrees.

About Reading

We talk a lot about writing here on the blog, and possibly not enough about reading, which is after all why we’re all here. Why do you think people love reading? We’re seeing lots of statistics that say reading as a pastime is dying – do you think that’s the case?

Oh, I hope not! I love to read, I love to listen to audiobooks, I love to talk books with friends. More and more tv shows and movies are based upon books, so why would we let a whole industry die?

For me, I grew up reading and my parents were both avid readers – though my mom not as much so anymore. Dad and I especially would swap books and talk about them. I read a lot of books as a kid that were probably too ‘adult” for me and I didn’t really understand all of it, but man I had fun trying.

About Writing

We’re told that the first page, paragraph, chapter, is absolutely key in making or breaking a book. Agents typically request only the first five pages of a novel; what do you think about that? If a book hasn’t grabbed you by the first five pages, do you put it down?

I couldn’t tell you what mistakes authors make – I’m not a writer, I can only tell you what I like. But I’m often horrorified to see typos / grammatical errors on the very first page – sometimes even the very first paragraph! I often won’t read the second page in that case. If you can’t even bother to get the first page right, then what makes me think the rest of the book would be better?

Just because anyone CAN write a book, doesn’t mean they SHOULD.

I wouldn’t say I give up on a book after five pages – I just recently struggled through an indie book I got for free on amazon, and read almost 50% of it before I gave up. Here’s the thing – I really liked the premise of the story, even though the main character drove me nuts and the author couldn’t write women characters to save his life. He was very insulting in writing a special needs kid, but I could get through that – it wasn’t until the author spent several pages making bathroom humor jokes (or more accurately, what he perceived as bathroom humor) that I got disgusted and gave up. The author had a whole series of these books, and I so wanted to like them, but I just couldn’t do it.

About Publishing

What do you think of the oft-quoted comment that the “slush-pile has moved online”? Do you think attitudes are changing with respect to indie or self-published titles? Do you have any ideas or comments on how the industry can ‘filter’ good from bad, aside from reviews?

Again, I repeat, I’m a blogger, not an author! I don’t have much to say on the above questions. I hope attitudes are changing about indie or self published authors, as I’ve met some wonderful folks with terrific books, and I’d love to see others enjoying them like I do. All I can tell you about attitudes is my dad still won’t read anything but a “real” hardcover book he bought at a discount chain store, and my mom will only read a paperback she picked up at a yard sale.

End of Interview:

To read Anastacia’s reviews, visit Anastacia Reads.